


Bad Memories of Red Mustangs

by AttenRevs



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Implied/Referenced Character Death, but turns into fluff feels, everything is fluff, vague description of violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-05
Updated: 2017-01-05
Packaged: 2018-09-14 21:15:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9203453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AttenRevs/pseuds/AttenRevs
Summary: Noah's first sight of his old car triggers past memories he'd rather forget. Ronan has always been able to change the atmosphere.





	

Summer heat pressed down on the small group; sticking in Gansey’s perfect hair, reflecting off the haphazard clips in Blue’s, turning Adam’s skin rose. Ronan stalked in front of them, smacking a bug on his arm. The wind played through the leaves, sending the towering sycamore into a chorus. 

Noah’s thoughts drifted upwards. The leaves glittered too green, clouds wisped too smooth across the pale blue. He turned, seeing the others hang a left out of the corner of his eye. A voice but not a voice called to him. A strangled, distant shout. Logically, he realized it sounded only in his mind. Still he glanced around. He rubbed a hand over his cheek. Giving a start as he saw Blue’s shredded t-shirt vanish amid the trees up ahead. His sneakers pounded the thin grass to catch her.

Then his heart stopped. 

Literally. 

The red Mustang sat at an angle from an overgrown track. Leaves and pollen gathered in heaps on the car that Noah didn’t notice. To him, it gleamed in warm summer sun, the smell of long gone exhaust filling his nose. The taste of a cheap hamburger, mostly grease and salt, heavy on his tongue. 

Mouth dry, he watched the others converge on the car, Ronan kicking at the massive tires, Adam checking the back window. A stolen Blink-182 sticker, he’d thought it’d be fun, a good laugh. 

Ronan popped the trunk. The soft crunch of his boots over the grass stirring a memory. Noah's fingers pressed against the side of his face, something cold spilling from his chest. 

The shouting again, a wet thud, thud, _thud_. 

Burning wetness bloomed on his face. 

Noah turned and ran. Nearly tripping over a fallen log, he had to get away from that clearing. The memories blared painfully loud in his head, his eyes in the past, looking _up, up, up_.

An overgrown shrub provided a harbor, Noah scuffing the knees of his rumpled Aglionby slacks to kneel before it. The warm, damp earth gave way to his clutching fingers. Body shaking as he convulsed. 

A hand rubbed circles into his back. 

Blue. 

Her voice, soothing, gentle. In his mind he could see the pinch of her eyebrows, the crinkle of her nose. For a moment the past had become the past once more. His friends. Gansey, Ronan, Adam, and Blue. 

Blue. A new life.

The small pulsing flame left his back, the cold seeping in around him, drowning him. Noah gasped and shook, pitching forward again. Against the cool grass he rested his forehead, but it didn’t help. The phantom blows came sharp, again and again. Rapid desperation fueling them. 

The world strangled around him, the air horribly flat. Blank. 

“Why? Why? Why… why…” 

“Fuck, man.”

Electric. Undeniably alive. Untamed. 

Ronan.

Noah’s hand fluttered out, grabbing for Ronan. Another curse. But Ronan caught his hand, pulling it away from himself.

Noah’s fingers felt like jello, he curled them against Ronan’s, pressing dirt between their palms. 

“You look like fucking hell.” 

The past and present slammed jarringly together. “Why… why?” 

Ronan’s sharp blue eyes flickered, belonging to another, dry and distracted. 

“Noah.” Ronan shook him. 

The other world, the other time slipped sideways. Noah convulsed again, blood and hamburger in the back of his throat. In a rush he pressed against Ronan, musty hay and leather filling his nose. The convulsions slowed, still painful. His fingers curled like gnarled roots into Ronan’s shirt. That word tumbling endlessly from his mouth.

“Blue said you were retching.” Ronan said it like Noah had let him down, but an arm folded over his back. One hand going to his hair protectively, much like he held Chainsaw. 

The world started sitting up, righting itself. No. This isn’t right. Nothing about this. Except the simmering current curled around him. 

“Shit.”

“Shit,” Noah agreed softly, nuzzling against Ronan’s chest with another shudder. 

“Looked like a fucking seizure, man.” 

“Dying.” Dying at the hands of someone like Ronan.

No.

No. Not like Ronan. Whelk had been a friend, but there was none of the fierce and wild Lynchness in him. Whelk burned cold, Ronan a sun. Terrifying and deadly, born impossible and beautiful. Their desperation nothing alike, Whelk for power, Ronan to feel alive. 

Noah wanted to feel alive.

“Come on.” Ronan squeezed his thighs against Noah’s arms, then stood from their small cocoon. 

Noah gave no resistance to being pulled along. A waif trailing behind this thunderous force of nature. Nothing in Ronan would let him sacrifice a friend. Like Gansey, Noah could see the protective fire underneath the fierce shell.

Panic sparked. His breath stalling. The clearing right there, one more step and he’d see it again. The Mustang. Whelk, Whelk, _Whelk_.

He couldn’t do it. 

Ronan turned, eyebrows low, not in anger but confusion. 

“I can’t again…” Noah said, voice hallow, eyes staring past Ronan. He blinked and Ronan stood in front of him. The harsh line of Ronan's mouth opened and closed a few times, but the sound didn't reach Noah.

Noah swayed where he stood, a small pained sound leaving him, one he’d made seven years ago. Hurriedly he rubbed his knuckles over his cheek, again and again and again. He could never smooth it out. 

Warm fingers grabbed his face, more gentle than they looked, small dots of electricity. Noah met those unforgiving blue eyes, not breathing. Carefully, Ronan’s fingers worked their way to his cheek, five still holding his jaw in place.

Ronan sucked in a breath with a quiet string of curses. 

Pain from the old blow shrank back under those probing fingers. Noah held loosely to Ronan’s arm. He and Gansey could carry conversations with their eyes and for the first time Noah felt he achieved that.

Ronan knew. 

“Shit,” he said again.

“Shit,” Noah agreed again.

“The car?” 

Noah didn’t have to respond. “I don’t want talk about it.” He didn’t. Not yet. He didn’t want the others to know. Ronan was different, Ronan breathed secrets. 

Ronan sighed, dropping his hands to his sides. “Get moving or you won’t have a choice.” He started back towards the others voices.

A shudder passed through Noah, feeling like his head was in a subwoofer. That sound came out of him again, pathetic and scared. 

A string of words left Ronan as he turned, but Noah’s ears were listening to another time. Ronan braced his shoulder against Noah’s middle and stood. One arm folded over the back of his legs like the safety bar on a rollarcoaster. 

Suddenly Noah found himself very in the present. Ronan bolted.

“Ronan!” 

Several other shouts joined Noah’s surprised one as Ronan charged through the clearing and onto the overgrown track, shoes hammering the uneven ground. The jostling took Noah back to when he and Whelk drove in, their teeth clacking and Noah smearing ketchup on his cheek.

Blue, mouth open with something to Ronan, blurred past his sight. Gansey next to her, politely puzzled. And Adam unreadable except for the small curve in the corner of his mouth. 

They flew past a red streak. 

Ronan said something he couldn’t hear. His barking laugh drowning out the phantom thud, thud, _thud_. 

And Noah laughed.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm both frustrated and creatively excited by all the mentions of things happening off screen in the Raven Cycle. When the gang finds the car there's a mention of Noah running off to be sick and then later they can hear Ronan talking to him, I wanted to know what happened so I made something up for myself.


End file.
